Initial Impressions: Mount Bachelor

A morning view of Mount Bachelor from the access road in early February 2021.

We recently spent several days road tripping around the Pacific Northwest, hitting major resorts in Washington and Oregon. We started at Mount Hood, where we visited three major ski areas: Mount Hood Meadows, Mount Hood Skibowl, and Timberline. From there, we made our way up to the Seattle area, where we visited Crystal, Stevens Pass, Summit at Snoqualmie, and Alpental. We also made it up to Mount Baker at the northern tip of the state.

Finally, we visited Oregon’s Mount Bachelor on our way back to Tahoe. Here are our initial impressions on the this remarkable ski volcano.

The first thing we noticed about Bachelor was somewhat mellower terrain than competing West Coast destination resorts. The first black-diamond run we tried, Boomerang off Outback, was short and not particularly steep. We also got on the high-speed Outback lift and found it substantially slower than expected; we later found a comment suggesting insurance issues are causing Outback to run at a reduced speed through the end of the season.

While not the most extreme in the world, a number of pretty interesting advanced runs did exist at the top of the Northwest lift. Trails sat along unique trees and rock-bands, making for a cool aesthetic. The tree and cliff bands essentially made for a series of awesome above-treeline chutes, which then filtered into unique tree terrain, which then ended up as traditionally defined trails. Nearly all Northwest runs followed this same pattern across some very lengthy runs.

East side areas mainly offered beginner and intermediate terrain. These runs provided beautiful views but felt surprisingly interchangeable. In our view, the best part of east Bachelor was the extensive Woodward terrain park network, which comprised a range of parks ranging from extra small to large. Like at other Woodward parks, we found the features to be engaging, unique, and progression-focused.

Mount Bachelor offers skiing off all 360 degrees of its face, and we found varied snow conditions across the resort. On the day of our visit, the east side of Bachelor contained windswept, packed powder as well as sheets of ice in places. On the other hand, conditions on the west side, while not standout, were relatively powdery. We heard that the opposite is often true conditions-wise, as east side terrain softens up faster thanks to earlier sun exposure while other mountain areas remain shaded through the afternoon. Snow conditions also varied across elevations.

Mount Bachelor’s summit areas presumably offer the toughest and most unique terrain at the resort. However, the Summit lift was closed throughout the week we visited. We learned that Summit typically remains closed pretty consistently throughout the winter due to variable conditions and that operations were particularly sensitive to wind. This was a major Bachelor drawback, as these circumstances impacted access to a substantial percentage of the resort’s terrain. However, the resort didn’t actively block off any terrain, so we were able to traverse as far across the 360 degree footprint as we wanted from mid-mountain lifts.

During our visit, Bachelor opened a series of food trucks to provide outdoor dining options during COVID. One of these was a stand that specialized in a strange Irish mashed potato dish; we tried the BBQ version with coleslaw and pulled pork, and while it started out pretty good, it got soupy and quite bland once the meat and slaw were gone.

The volcano, as viewed from the resort’s east face.

In the places with favorable conditions, we had a whole lot of fun at Bachelor thanks to its unique, diverse volcano footprint. But we also didn’t find any extreme terrain and were disappointed to find the entire summit area closed off during our visit.

We’ll return to Mt. Bachelor later this season to explore the summit terrain, making sure to be very careful with our timing so we can actually make it. Before publishing a full assessment, we plan comprehensive talks with locals to ensure the review contains fully accurate content.